A couple of weeks back I decided to start posting the trailers from some of my favorite movies. Being a child of the 70s I naturally opted to start my new series in that decade. The first film that I went with was the 1976 action/comedy Silver Streak. Today I decided to feature The Apple Dumpling Gang from 1975, which holds the distinction of being the first film that I ever saw in a movie theater.
If you recall the film is about a down on his luck gambler named Russell Donovan who ends up stuck with three orphans who he is trying to unload every opportunity he gets. When the three mischievous kiddos stumble upon a giant gold nugget and become instant celebrities his opinion suddenly changes. The massive nugget draws the attention of two local gangs, one the bumbling Hash Knife Outfit and the other is the truly nasty Stillwell Gang.
As you can imagine the bumbling burglars make several slapstick attempts at stealing the gold while the real robbers hash out their plan to extract it from the local bank vault. In the end you mix together the gambler, the bumblers, the three kids and a pretty stagecoach driver named Dusty who all join forces to thwart the criminals and save the day.
Since this is a Disney film, naturally Donovan and Dusty fall and love, get married, adopt the kids and name their family The Apple Dumpling Gang.
... and they all lived happily ever after.
Though this is a family friendly comedy about a gambler, a pretty stagecoach driver, and three adorable orphans who come together to form a family after finding a hunk of gold the size of Rhode Island the real draw of the film is the comedic exploits of the Hash Knife Outfit, Theodore and Amos, played by comedy legends Tim Conway and Don Knotts. Conway, as you may remember, was a hot commodity at the time due to his success as regular on the uber popular Carol Burnette Show while Knotts is his typical brilliant self. You may note that Don Knotts simply played the same character in everything he ever did. True, Theodore could be easily dismissed as Barney Fife or Mr. Chicken in the old west, but that would be an unfair critique. Knotts may have seemed to be typecast, but in actuality he just did his type of comedy so well that he always stole a scene no matter what. In the case of this film the duo of Knotts and Conway worked so well organically that they literally steal the whole film as what I can only describe as a dynamic duo of laughter.
I honestly didn't intend for this piece to be a tribute to the late Don Knotts and Tim Conway but in regards to their performance in this movie it would be almost impossible not to do so.
In regards to the trailer that was promised I'm afraid that there simply isn't a decent copy of The Apple Dumpling Gang promo out there so I have opted to post a couple of clips that feature both Knotts and Conway at their best as Theodore and Amos.
No comments:
Post a Comment